The casino tower lood like a broken lighthouse—glass and steel catching the faint moonlight, windows flickering sporadically from backup systems or dying ergency lights. It had once been the crown jewel of City H, attached to the mall by a gleaming skybridge. It had been advertised as hurricane proof, riot proof, tsunami proof, and—ironically—apocalypse resistant.
Sera didn’t want to be the one to break it to soone like Lachlan who believed the myth about the building, but it definitely wasn’t zombie proof.
From where Sera crouched on the edge of the rooftop across the street, she could see them.
Zombies.
Hundreds of them. They were both inside and outside of the building, and from what she was getting from the creature, they were pissed.
The zombies on the outside were climbing. Bodies scaled the outer walls like a colony of ants—scratching at the reinforced windows, crawling over each other in desperate bursts of motion as if they’d forgotten how to wait. Sothing inside the tower had stirred them up. Or maybe it was just instinct now. Pack like behavior. A mindless echo of a forr life that told them there was sothing worth chasing inside.
Or maybe, the zombies on the inside were part of their horde, and all they wanted to do was get to them.
You know... zombies have feelings, too.
Sera scoffed and shook her head. There was no point in wasting any more ti watching. She had a purpose, and now it was ti to get started.
She took a deep breath and jumped.
The wind tore at her coat as she flew across the alley, landing on the lower roof of the mall. Her claws were already out—black, curved, and more bone than nail. They sank into the concrete as easily as they sank into the flesh of her prey.
It was so easy... it was almost too easy.
She didn’t pause or take any ti to think or second guess the instincts of the creature inside of her.
The creature moved for her, guiding her toward their common goal. And Sera was smart enough to just sit back and let it happen.
She continued to climb the outer face of the casino on the other side of where all the zombies were doing the sa thing.
One hand. Then the other. Then her feet dug in like talons, her boots helping with the traction. First it was one hundred feet up, then two hundred.
There was no rope. No harness. Just the cold, slick surface of a forty two-story monunt to capitalism, and the thing inside her didn’t care how high they went.
She reached the twentieth floor in under three minutes.
Her fingers gripped the fra of a narrow window. Just one of those thin safety-latched ones ant to vent stale air, tilted open no more than three inches.
Sera grunted.
The human part of her had no chance of fitting through.
But the creature...
The creature simply laughed when Sera suggested that they go back down and find a different way in.
With a low ripple, her arms thinned. The mass of her hips and thighs lted down, bones shifting with wet little clicks. Her waist narrowed, chest flattening as fat and tissue were pulled inward, restructured.
She hissed through her teeth, half-annoyed.
This was why she needed to start wearing stretchier clothes. One day, she was going to end up naked in front of soone just because her body decided skin was more efficient than yoga pants.
With a twist and a slither, she pressed into the gap.
It was like threading a needle. Muscle gave way. Ribs dislocated and flexed. Her body flattened like a cat slipping under a door.
She dropped inside with barely a sound before she turned around and closed the window behind her.
The room itself was dark and cramped. It was so dark that even her enhanced vision needed a second to adjust. The ergency lights were long dead on this floor. There was blood on the ceiling tiles—so dried, so still wet enough to drip.
Opening the door of the cleaning closet, the hallway reeked of iron, ammonia, and whatever had died last.
Perfect.
She moved low and quiet, scenting the air with each breath. The creature was in control, and she was loving this new type of hunt. Animals were too easy, they didn’t have the complex thoughts that hunting sothing more sentient would have.
Like humans.
Like other zombies.
There were at least two zombies on this floor, maybe more, but the creature wasn’t interested in them at the mont.
She didn’t take the elevator, didn’t trust it to still be working. Instead, she descended the stairwell, two flights at a ti, and ca face to face with her first test.
A creature stood near the vending alcove.
Six feet tall with a head that looked like a beach ball that was perched on the end of a pencil thin neck. Like her, it was more bone than muscles, but its clothes were hanging off of it like he had decided to put them through a shredder instead of the washing machine.
It turned toward her.
It didn’t snarl, it didn’t roar a challenge, it simply charged.
Sera ducked low and drove her claws up through its chin and out the top of its skull.
The zombie dropped to the floor. She waited. One beat, then two.
The skin began to knit.
Bone cracked back into place.
Its limbs twitched.
The head tried to lift.
Sera didn’t flinch.
She dropped her bag. Pulled out the blowtorch.
One flick.
Blue fla erupted.
The zombie made no sound as it tried to rise again—half-brain crushed, eyes flickering—but Sera stepped forward and drove the torch directly into its face.
The effect was instant.
The flesh blackened, bubbled, and peeled away. The scent of burning flesh and liquefied eyeball filled the hall.
The twitching stopped.
It didn’t get back up.
She let the fla linger until there was nothing left of the skull and body but scorched pulp and a curling sar of smoke.
Then she kicked the ashes aside and moved on.
If one strike won’t kill it, then fire would.
That would be her rule here.
She wouldn’t run, she wouldn’t hide.
If this was going to be hers—this tower, this fortress, this future—then she would take it the hard way.
Floor by floor.
Body by body.
One blaze at a ti.
The only thing she didn’t know was just what her creature was keeping from her.
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